By Lynn L. Bergeson and Carla N. Hutton
 
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and the Agile BioFoundry (ABF) will hold a webinar on September 22, 2022, highlighting technologies used by the ABF to accelerate biomanufacturing. According to BETO, the ABF consortium collaborates with industry and academia to develop technologies that enable commercially relevant biomanufacturing of sustainable bioproducts. During the webinar, attendees will hear from ABF scientists on how they use state-of-the-art machine learning, deep learning, testing, and modeling techniques to guide the bioengineering process and speed up bioproduct development.
 
The webinar will feature the following speakers:

• Nathan Hillson, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the principal investigator of the ABF. Dr. Hillson leads the consortium’s Integrated Design-Build-Test-Learn task;
• Taraka Dale, scientist and principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-lead of ABF’s Host Onboarding and Development task;
• Hector Garcia Martin, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-lead of ABF’s Learn subtask, and
• Philip Laible, biophysicist at Argonne National Laboratory and co-lead of ABF’s Learn subtask.

Registration for the webinar is open. 

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By Lynn L. Bergeson

On May 3, 2018, the Advanced Biofuels Association (ABFA) announced that it had submitted a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to provide waivers from RFS requirements. Michael McAdams, President of ABFA, stated:

 “We have seen reports that the number of small refinery exemptions recently granted for compliance years 2016 and 2017 have doubled compared to previous years. ABFA members are concerned that Administrator Pruitt is granting these exemptions in an arbitrary and capricious manner to undisclosed parties behind closed doors with no accountability for its decision-making process.”

“The news reports about these exemptions have had immediate and significant market impacts on the prices of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) for the biomass-based diesel (D4) and overall renewable fuel (D6) pools,” continued McAdams. “Dropping RIN prices disincentivize blending, causing economic harm to ABFA’s members and posing a threat to the integrity of the RFS program at large.​

These concerns originated when a large oil refinery, Andeavor, was granted a hardship waiver, which is typically given to small refineries producing less than 75,000 barrels per day that suffer a disproportionate economic hardship from the cost of RFS compliance. For more information, see “Open Letter From Iowan Biofuel Producers Urges Protection Of RFS” on the BRAG blog.

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Biofuels supporters and opponents remain heavily engaged in RFS policy issues. Last week, we reported on a news report that one advanced biofuels trade association, the Advanced Biofuels Association (ABFA), may be working with the American Petroleum Institute (API) on potential legislative language that would provide additional RIN credit for advanced biofuels under the federal RFS program. Since then, ABFA and API have both denied the accuracy of the story. In addition, DuPont announced that it has relinquished its membership in the ABFA and reaffirmed its commitment to advocating that the RFS is working as intended to promote the investment in and development of biofuels and should not be altered in any way through legislation at this point in time.

James C. Greenwood, current President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and former Member of Congress, sent a letter to the leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works asserting that the broad consensus among the biofuels industry, including the advanced biofuels industry, is that now is not the time to legislate on the RFS.

API has continued its opposition to the RFS by announcing that it plans to sue EPA if it fails to issue the final rule setting the 2014 RFS renewable volume obligations (RVO) by November 30, 2013. While the law mandates that EPA issue in final the following year's RVOs by November 30, EPA has consistently missed that deadline. This is the first time API has threatened to sue the Agency if it does not meet the November 30 deadline.
 

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